Report: Obama to propose federal funding for armed guards in schools

posted at 9:31 am on January 16, 2013 by Allahpundit

Knowing that any huge gun bill is doomed in Congress, and aware that he needs to show America how eager he is to Do Something, The One lurches towards plan B — i.e. including Wayne LaPierre’s proposal for more federally-funded security in schools as part of his package of recommendations on reducing gun violence:

The left mocked this idea after LaPierre’s presser last month because more school security guards does nothing to achieve their goal of reducing gun ownership among the population. (I’m keen myself to hear from Obama and the NRA what other spending we should cut to pay for this.) But it polls well with the public: According to Pew, more Americans favor this than banning assault weapons or high-capacity magazines. If you’re O, why not toss it out there and see how Republicans react? Incorporating an NRA suggestion will make the Democratic bill look that much more “reasonable” and bipartisan. Now the ball’s in the GOP’s court to either pass something along these lines, which gives Obama a limited political victory, or torpedo it and endure the inevitable “Republicans won’t even listen to Wayne LaPierre on gun violence” news stories.

Meanwhile, to follow up on Ed’s post, how sure are we that O will roll out his plans for executive orders on guns at today’s big presser with Biden? Chris Cillizza makes a fair point that announcing a big batch of EOs right up front could backfire:

The President acting alone would stoke those fears [of gun confiscation] and gin up Republicans to keep any sort of larger legislation — like, say, an assault weapons ban — from moving through Congress. It would likely be seen as a poison-the-well moment from which the debate might never recover to a place where bipartisan compromise was possible.

President Obama and his senior strategists are certainly aware of the danger of appearing to make (or change) law by fiat. If Obama goes big on executive orders later today, it’s likely because he has made the calculation that no significant number of Republicans are going to be with him on any sort of gun control measure and, therefore, the only way to get some of these things done is through his powers as the country’s chief executive.

Perhaps. But he also could run the risk of jeopardizing more broad-reaching pieces of his gun agenda if Democratic Senators up for re-election in pro-gun states like Louisiana, Arkansas and South Dakota balk at getting behind his legislative solutions in the wake of an uproar over the executive orders.

Any executive orders he issues will deal with the margins of gun control but Cillizza’s right that the GOP will use them for leverage. If O walks out today and rattles off 19 things he plans to do unilaterally, Republicans will argue that (a) they’re now duty-bound to halt the Democrats’ power grab by blocking any big new gun bills in Congress and (b) the fact that Obama’s already done so much via executive order means that there’s less need for Congress to act too. But if he doesn’t rattle off what he plans to do today and instead says he intends to act unilaterally later depending upon what Congress does, that’ll sound sinister, a sort of “pass gun control or I’ll pass it myself” ultimatum which can also be exploited by Republicans politically. Maybe he’ll compromise by rolling out a few specific executive actions today while holding a few back for after this all falls apart in Congress. He’s got a bunch of skittish Democrats in the Senate to worry about too. Any sudden moves could cause a stampede.

Exit question: How committed to a tough fight can the White House be if they’re already signaling that Obama will sign a gun bill that lacks an assault-weapons ban?

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This is venturing into pass the popcorn territory, although as entertainment this is more along the lines of a trainwreck.
Only in Obamaworld do you go full steam ahead with gun control without Congressional support but offer a gun in every school on taxpayer dime to protect the kids.
Along with NRA membership numbers I’d love to see what the enrollment numbers are for on line charter schools.

I recently filed a petition with the Obama White House that needs 150 signatures before it can show up on the Open Petitions section of We the People. Those who want to have a little fun while educating Progressives may find it worth looking at. Make ‘em sputter: Common-sense Media Control.

After all, if creative interpretation of the Second Amendment can make schoolchildren safer, why should those First Amendment extremists escape when it’s their turn?

Soooo….lefties….armed guards at schools? Is Bark really going to put “high capacity over the shoulder things that go up” in close proximity to our children? What if the guard goes insane one day and decides to kill everyone?

But not one move in this world towards the root cause of today’s blurring of the line between right and wrong.

The liberal/ACLU/Lawyers Guild moral destruction in this country.

In fact he’s more likely to give the litigation industry more access to private and municipal funds and call the deepening of central control wonderful than he is recognize when it takes a village that means community standards not DC standards.

The left mocks any conservative idea and after a short moratorium, they tout the same idea and claim it was theirs all along.

Why can’t the conservatives gain ground against the left? It’s because the left doesn’t play by the rules. They lie, cheat, mis-direct, change the definitions of words, and anything else they can do to win. Conservatives attempt to play by the rules of civility and honesty. Either they have to lower themselves to the left’s level or stop attempting to negotiate with them altogether or they’ll continue to lose ground.

The Dems like to think that the GOP is a dying entity. What they fail to see is that those who are disillusioned with the GOP establishment aren’t going to run into the Dems arms. They will regroup and come back more libertarian than moderate and the Dems will wish the establishment GOP was back.

The district estimates the plan to put armed guards on every elementary, middle and high school campus would cost anywhere from $2.2 million to $2.7 million, which is double the district’s current budget for security.

We live in Plano and I have two sons that attend Plano ISD.
So that would be another 1.4 million or so?
Plano ISD has a little over 55,000 students.
That would cost an additional $25 per year per student.
Maybe we can raise funds with raffle tickets?
Maybe the winners can get a gift certificate to shop at their favorite gun store?

If Obama took just one dollar for from every five dollars he has spent for Obamacare and applied it to protecting our schools…hell, that’s real money. The Ponzi’s and scammers from the left will be coming out of the woodwork in droves, trying to get their share of this new money being tossed about…cuz’ it is for the children, ya know?

Let the local communities, the counties, the states, each come up with their own formula to better protect our schools (and other public places) from idiots.

Once the federal government is involved, the costs skyrocket, control is lost, mandates are forced on communities and not paid for, and the entire thing gets bogged down in a morass of federal regulations, crossed jurisdictions and political capital.

Prediction: within 6 months there will be a new federal security force protecting primary schools. Unionized and completely in lock step with all things democrat. Funded by us with a 8% clip to the party that created them. It will dwarf the TSA too.

DanMan on January 16, 2013 at 8:16 AM

I’m guessing plenty knew this was coming. Next prediction. They will target returning veterans for the task thus gaining many dem converts from the military.

Cmon guys, you know better. This was called weeks ago by Mark Steyn after the NRA went up there supporting security guards, aka TSA, for all schools. And I was mocked on this site for repeating it. Enjoy supporting an institution (NRA) which loves them some big government. I will not.

As I had mentioned in a previous post, progs will now absolutely love the idea of guns in schools.

No better way to ensure the indoctrination of our kids to be proper global citizens.

The governmental guidelines will require a huge new federal bureauacracy.

A job this important will require extensive training, ensuring jobs for all currently unemployed politically-preferred global citizens currently residing in the U.S.

Training will be paramount for these protection heroes. Luckily, the federal government will show its benevolence by completely picking up the tab for all their training/education in the new exciting PhD programs to be instituted in only the finest colleges around the country.

Those holding such an important posistion as Child Development Safety Enhancement Engineer will need to be protected from over-bearing school boards and the various Parent Associations who might take issue with the treatment of their kids. What better way to accomplish this than with govrnment approval to unionize?

Sounds absurd to a rational man, but like the perfect solution to a GlobeProgger. Lucky for them, there are so few rational men left in America.

Soooo….lefties….armed guards at schools? Is Bark really going to put “high capacity over the shoulder things that go up” in close proximity to our children? What if the guard goes insane one day and decides to kill everyone?

Bishop on January 16, 2013 at 9:45 AM

The guards will only have 6 bullets in their magazine clips so if they go nuts they can be easily tackled when reloading.

Prediction: within 6 months there will be a new federal security force protecting primary schools. Unionized and completely in lock step with all things democrat. Funded by us with a 8% clip to the party that created them. It will dwarf the TSA too.

DanMan on January 16, 2013 at 8:16 AM

Yup, I believe a poison pill along these lines is the plan. Then when the House GOP blocks it, they’ll be demonized in the usual ways.

Good grief. I mean, seriously. Is NOTHING to be left to the States? State citizens are already looted by the federal government to the point where there’s hardly anything left to run a state on. And now, we’re going to have federal, and I assume unionized, armed guards in our schools?… running, no doubt, with TSA-like efficiency? /sarc

While I wouldn’t argue with any state or local district which decided upon armed security in its schools, this is NOT a federal issue. Why can’t these idiots in Washington understand their Constitutional role? I suspect we know the answer….

“Never let a good crisis go to waste”, huh? And its a two-fer. Get as much gun control as you can in order to satisfy your party’s insane ideologues, and create some payola for your union stooges as well.

What is it about the Gun-grabbing ghouls and their BSMedia minions with protecting themselves and not our precious offspring? They lost their collective cookies over the mere suggestion that armed police offices keep kids safe.

In part it could be their Dracula like aversion to guns in the hands of individuals not of their security details. But you have to ask yourself why is the oppressive left so adamant about not protecting the Children?

There has to be something else at work here – some other reason than Hoplophobia in the extreme – but what could it be? Why don’t they want someone – either uniformed officer or a CCW person in the schools to stop the next maniac?

Ask yourself – why would they be against a proven security measure they employ for themselves?

Perhaps the simplest explanation is the best – they simply don’t want children protected because that doesn’t further their socialist nation agenda.

We might as well just come right out and say it: They don’t want the children protected because they want more massacres.

They WANT to see wall to wall coverage of dead bodies and screaming parents. The WANT to see days of coverage as the BSMedia milks ever last bit of agony from these Serious Crisis that they see as prime opportunities to further their destruction of the Constitution.

Just look at how they almost can’t hide their giddiness over the news of these massacres.

Look at how they can’t wait to seize upon these “Crisis” with declarations about how other innocent gun owners are somehow guilty of the crime just because they exercise their God-given and Constitutionally affirmed right of self defense

They recently put in place legislation to further restrict our rights – taking the advantage of the deaths of young children to enhance their power grabbing agenda. Problem is, the emotional groundswell from Sandy Hook has subsided so they can’t “Use” it as a means to deprive the innocent of their right of self-defense.

Now, like the death vultures that they are, they are just waiting for their next “opportunity”. They’re patiently waiting for the first reports of a shooting in school or some other ‘Gun-Free’ zone to spring into action.

But now, someone comes along and makes the very practical suggestion of protecting the children and they go Ballistic. They cannot abide this because it would reduce the chances of another death opportunity for them.

Armed officers would take away what they see as ‘collateral’ damage {dead children} in their quest for a disarmed and pacified socialist national utopia.

Armed guards already protect their children, but most of our children aren’t afforded that security.

So why doesn’t everyone ask the gun grabbing ghouls of the Oppressive Left why they don’t want the children protected?

This is why I was a little annoyed at La Pierre’s suggestion — more big government. I’m not that surprised that Obama would like it. I don’t see why you can’t have a couple of rifles in locked cases around the school like fire extinguishers, and then make it mandatory that at least one or two people on campus be trained in their use, and then given the codes to unlock the cases in an emergency.

Is there a reason this needs to be a FEDERAL issue and not a state issue, other than Obama himself wants to wring some kind of political capital from the bodies of these dead children?

The next steps: A new federal agency of armed school guards, followed by their unionization. New Democrat interest group, and if anybody objects, scream that opponents of this are ‘against safety’ and want children to die.

Just so you don’t have any bake sales. Remember, the health department and the food police from the White House have to approve any edibles brought to the school from the outside.

iamsaved on January 16, 2013 at 9:53 AM

We have bake sales all the time…..
I think I will propose to the PTA that we get a booth at every gun show and sell
cookies to fund our guards. Perhaps we can also have applications to hand out to the gun show
attendees that want to be an armed school guard. I told my wife I would gladly roam the halls
of our schools with an AR-15 to protect my sons. We don’t need Obama to “protect us”.
We can do it ourselves – this is Texas man!!!!

I’d say bump pay a little for teachers that carry and have CHLs. 10 or 20 armed anonymous teachers spread around a school of 600 kids would be better than 1 armed guard at the wrong door.

A few stories of teachers stopping unknowns in the halls may be all that’s needed.

DanMan on January 16, 2013 at 9:58 AM

Just to play devil’s advocate, as a former teacher in a school with massive discipline problems, due to tons of kids living in “baby mama” homes with no “baby daddies” around, I see one advantage of hiring guards, instead of letting teachers carry:

Eventually, a CCW teacher will snap on one of the little criminals in his or her charge, and struggle mightily with drawing down on the miscreant.

Statistically, it would likely finally happen, even given the discipline of the vast majority of CCW permit holders.

I witnessed several assaults in classrooms and halls, on students, teachers and administrators with fists, chairs, and other weapons, and can’t you just see a couple teachers finally holding a violent student at gunpoint?

I said I was playing devil’s advocate. it’s not out of the realm of possibly. Then watch the media explosion.

This is why I was a little annoyed at La Pierre’s suggestion — more big government. I’m not that surprised that Obama would like it. I don’t see why you can’t have a couple of rifles in locked cases around the school like fire extinguishers, and then make it mandatory that at least one or two people on campus be trained in their use, and then given the codes to unlock the cases in an emergency.

Progressive Heretic on January 16, 2013 at 10:17 AM

1. Fire extinguishers are in unlocked cases and everyone knows how to use them.

2. What do you do in the event, as in Newtown, when the person(s) authorized to access the storage area are already dead?

Guns in schools is rational? And here all this talk about 30-round high magazine clip extensions causing people to murder really had me thinking. Now I must rethink.

Bishop on January 16, 2013 at 10:31 AM

You are overthinking this.

Remember, being a liberal means you never have to think twice. Or even once. Just let the powers that be tell you what to think. And go with the flow even if it is going in the opposite direction it was going yesterday. It’s all good.

Likely not at all akin to LaPierre’s ‘every school in America!’ rant.
More likely something, you know, rational.

verbaluce on January 16, 2013 at 10:07 AM

You’ve got to love liberal logic.

If conservatives say that if schools are concerned about security they should arm teachers or hire armed guards or make arrangements with local law enforcement then liberals have a fit.

Obama will suggest the federal government should fund guns in schools (with strings attched of course) and the idea is now brilliant.

gwelf on January 16, 2013 at 10:15 AM

I think you should love more making an argument against an invented ‘liberal’ points.
Where have I ever said armed security was never a good idea?
Where has anyone said ‘never have armed security’?
I suppose all those same folks that have said they wanna take all the guns away.
Again, Obama’s proposal won’t be LaPierre’s…by a long shot.
And it wasn’t just ‘liberals’ dismissing La Pierre.

So the NRA was right… However this should not be done on federal level as it will cost at least $ 20 billions a year… Use the current police force in each town where they sit doing nothing for most the time and have some its officers guard the local schools… This will not incur any major additional cost to the tax payers…

Doubly so. It’ll pad the SEIU rolls nationwide while giving Democrats something they can bash Republicans over the head with, either for being intransigent and refusing to pass an idea that started with them, or for not being the anti-spending crusaders they made themselves out to be and passing expensive federal legislation while stonewalling Obama everywhere else.

However this should not be done on federal level as it will cost at least $ 20 billions a year…

Ya got that right. Maybe a new bureaucracy, akin to the TSA and managed by the Dept of Ed. with federally trained and provided government union guards, akin to the TSA, cause we all know how well TSA is working out. And with that federal money comes yet more dependency attachment to the fed and its rules.

So the NRA was right… However this should not be done on federal level as it will cost at least $ 20 billions a year… Use the current police force in each town where they sit doing nothing for most the time and have some its officers guard the local schools… This will not incur any major additional cost to the tax payers…

mnjg on January 16, 2013 at 11:48 AM

Exactly right. Our school district has a resource officer who is a member of the local police department who is permanently assigned to the high school. On school days he is here at the school, otherwise, he does regular rounds just like the other officers. He dresses a little differently at school, not in full uniform, but he does have his sidearm and cuffs. So far as I know he has never used the sidearm but I have seen the cuffs deployed. (I work at the school.) Our city pays for it and is looking to station one at the elementary school, in light of recent developments. If towns think this is a good idea for their schools, they will find a way to pay for it. No reason to get the feds involved.

I witnessed several assaults in classrooms and halls, on students, teachers and administrators with fists, chairs, and other weapons, and can’t you just see a couple teachers finally holding a violent student at gunpoint?

I said I was playing devil’s advocate. it’s not out of the realm of possibly. Then watch the media explosion.

cane_loader on January 16, 2013 at 10:29 AM

Sorry to hear that you had to teach in such a cesspool.

Of course, not every school is that bad. I agree – in some school districts, an armed officer would be needed. Not in all districts, though – this is why the security of a school is a local issue, not a federal one.

On the other side of the coin, I suspect that assaults on teachers would go way down, if the scumbags among the student population knew that some random teachers – MIGHT – be packing heat.

I witnessed several assaults in classrooms and halls, on students, teachers and administrators with fists, chairs, and other weapons, and can’t you just see a couple teachers finally holding a violent student at gunpoint?

cane_loader on January 16, 2013 at 10:29 AM

If a student is violent, and the teacher is fearing for their life, or the lives of their students… I’m ok with this!

That’s what guns are for… protecting the innocent… or have we forgotten that many of these actions have been committed by actual students? Columbine comes to mind…

And those students that have traditionally terrorized the teaching staff and their fellow students will learn that they are no longer the final word.

Also, here in Ohio a shooting range offered free CCL and tactical training for the first 30 teachers/admins after Newtown… over 600 applied! So don’t try to make the argument that teachers aren’t willing to attempt to defend themselves and their students using the appropriate training…

When Wayne LaPierre suggested putting armed guards in schools, he was denounced as being a raving lunatic by the Establishment Press.

SubmarineDoc on January 16, 2013 at 12:34 PM

That’s because the Establishment Press is as dumb as a box of rocks. (Oops… I may have offended rocks!)

Our local schools have uniformed officers around on a regular basis… introducing themselves in elementary schools, running DARE programs in the middle/high schools, and routinely patrolling the high schools. Local armed officers are already doing this job. Only the Press could be so dumb they didn’t know that.

I should probably add, along with my other comments, that I see armed teachers as a supplementary force, alongside a local uniformed officer. But that officer should be a local resource, not a federal employee.